Witchcraft Couture By Katarina West

Oscar
Pellegrini is a talented fashion designer with a deadly enemy: his own critical
mind. He destroys much of what he designs and has been drifting for years,
gradually retreating from the fashion business he loves but holding on to his
dreams of success. A
chance meeting with a former girlfriend triggers a creative crisis so deep that
Oscar escapes to Russia, where he drinks and despairs like never before.

Just
when he thinks he has lost everything he discovers a magical machine that turns
ordinary outfits into irresistible sartorial triumphs. Oscar takes the machine
back to Italy – and before he knows it, he has become famous for his designs,
and celebrities and socialites are fighting to be first to wear his gorgeous
gar­ments.

But the
happily-ever-after ending for the fashion messiah turns into a nightmare when
his dresses acquire a life of their own, gaining energy and evil as time goes
on. Haunted by his creations, a dark secret he is no longer able to hide, Oscar
finds himself fighting for his life and sanity, and searching for the answer to
a question he never knew existed.

Is there such
a thing as stolen genius, and if there is, can it turn against the very person
who stole it?

About
the Author

Katarina
West was born in Helsinki, Finland, into a bilingual family that in addi­tion
to humans consisted of dogs, cats, horses, guinea pigs, canaries, rabbits and –
thanks to her biology teacher mother – stuffed owls and squirrels.

She
spent time travelling in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and went on to study
at Queen Mary and Westfield College in London and the European University
Institute in Florence, where she completed a PhD in political science and
published a book based on it, Agents of Altruism.

During those student
years she started work as a journalist, and continued writing for various
Finnish magazines and newspapers for over ten years, writing on various topics
from current events and humanitarian issues to celebrity interviews and short
stories. She also briefly worked as a university lecturer on humanitarian
issues in Nor­thern Italy.

Katarina
lives in an old farmhouse in Chianti with her husband and son and when not
writing, she is fully immersed in Tuscan country life, from jam-making and
olive-picking to tractor maintenance.

Witchcraft
Couture is her first
novel and, unlike the unearthly clothes in its pages, her outfits are not
shining.